As software applications have become increasingly complex, software development tools have been created to assist in the development of such applications. One such development tool, known as an integrated development environment (“IDE”), can assist the developer in understanding the structure, the dependencies, and the flow of complex applications. Examples of IDEs include Tornado® and SNiFF+®, both available from Wind River Systems, Inc., as well as Visual C++®, available from Microsoft, C-Forge® available from CodeForge, VisualAge®, available from IBM, Jbuilder®, available from Borland, and SlickEdit®, available from MicroEdge.
Software applications generally consist of many different files of source code that are then “built” together into a single application. Thus, development of software applications often involves developing these distinct source code files and revising those files over time. With complex software applications involving a high number of files, or in software development projects using multiple team members—or multiple teams—controlling access to those files and managing their development can be a very elaborate and complicated task.
Several version control tools have been developed to assist the software developer in controlling and managing revision information for each source code file. Version control is the process of managing and administering file revisions. Examples of version control tools include: Revision Control System (“RCS”), an open-source tool under the GNU public license; Clear Case, available from Rational Software; Concurrent Versions System (“CVS”), an open-source network system; PVCS available from Intersolv; and Visual Source Safe available from Microsoft. These version control tools help to manage multiple revisions of source code files by keeping a complete history of changes performed to the files. They allow the user to track changes made to the files and to return to a previous revision of a file. They may also keep track of who performed the revisions and when, and can “lock” a file to prevent two users from revising the file simultaneously. Typically, files are located in a repository that is directly accessed by the version control tool. The file may be “checked out” of the repository by a developer, and changes may then be made to the file before it is checked back in. While the file is checked out in a locked state, other members of the development team may not make changes to it. When the file is checked back in it becomes accessible again to other members of the team, and the version control tool helps manage information about who checked out the document, when, and what changes were made. The tool may allow for the developer to save comments describing his changes and may assign a new name or version number to the file. Most of the version control tools offer these basic features in addition to other more advanced features.
Most IDEs in use today include some type of version control functionality coded into the IDE itself. Alternatively, some IDEs have been designed to function together with one specific version control tool. In those cases an adapter program provides an interface between the IDE and the separately coded version control tool. At least one IDE (SNiFF+® version 3.0, available from Wind River) is compatible with several different version control tools. In SNiFF+® version 3.0, the communication between the IDE and the version control tool is accomplished using various version control adapters, one for each version control tool supported by the IDE. Each version control adapter used with SNiFF+® version 3.0 includes scripts that map the version control commands available in the SNiFF+® menus with the corresponding version control commands of the version control tool to which it is adapted. The user dialogues, graphic user interface, and many of the version control and configuration management functions are performed by the IDE program itself. The version control adapters are relatively simple script files and are unable to make any but the simplest of decisions. Instead, the version control adapters act merely to dispatch commands and information between the IDE to the version control tool.
The SNiFF+® version 3.0 IDE program offered more choice to developers than existing IDEs about which version control tool to use. However, because it performed most of the version control and configuration management functions itself, it was relatively inflexible in its adaptability with the different version control tools. For example, SNiFF+® version 3.0 was unable to take advantage of version control tools it did not support, and was unable to take advantage of features of the version control tools that it did support where the features differed from, or were not taken into account by, the hard-coded version control features of the IDE. In addition, because much of the version control functionality was hard-coded into the SNiFF+® version 3.0 IDE itself, changes in the functionality of later-developed version control tools could not be taken into account by the IDE. Moreover, the SNiFF+® version 3.0 IDE was incapable of properly handling many exceptional conditions, such as error messages, that were generated by the version control tools.